The Top 100 Tracks of 2010

50. Cults

"Go Outside"

[Forest Family]

Cults quietly debuted their invigorating first single "Go Outside" on Bandcamp, without so much as a MySpace or a Facebook page listeners could use to mine for details about them. The low-key introduction was notable not just for injecting some much needed mystery into an era in which we know so much about our over-accessible pop stars that we even see camera-phone pictures of their junk, but because the song itself-- which recalls both brightly twee, glockenspiel-happy Swedish pop and the simple, nostalgia-inducing melody of the Faces' classic "Ooh La La"-- sparked immediate interest in the group. The New York band has since gone public and signed to a major label (which guarantees some serious spotlight glare), but with more songs like this one, they'll continue to hold our interest for two or three minutes, rather than 140 characters, at a time. --Rebecca Raber

49. ceo

"Come With Me"

[Modular / Sincerely Yours]

The CEO is, with good reason, a popular bogeyman, a puppeteer buffered from the consequences of his decisions by golden penthouses and parachutes. Weirdly, that makes ceo a perfect name for the Tough Alliance member Eric Berglund's solo project, a cocoon of carefree dance-pop untouched by street-level problems. Berglund's best song, "Come with Me", is a dreamily temperate ode to escapism. With bubbly synths and a wistful piano bridge sandwiched between a gleaming, fluffy top layer and skittering bottom, it's like candy made from five kinds of candy. There's a sugary ache in Berglund's voice, and a shrewd note, too: He's inviting you from a place they call "reality" to "a place I call reality." This is an invitation to choose a world where we can have it all, even for a few blissful minutes, over one where we probably have less than we'd like; a proposition that's hard to resist. --Brian Howe

48. Best Coast

"When I'm With You"

[Mexican Summer]

"When I'm With You" launches straight into the invincible feeling of a brand new relationship. Bombs could be going off, there could be an earthquake, the world might be crazy, but this kind of us-against-the-world tunnelvision is a universally relatable sentiment. Best Coast's take on this well-worn pop trope works so well because of Bethany Cosentino's directness: Her vocals, set against reverb-soaked guitar chords, are utterly sincere, self-assured, and shouted to the rooftops. That ability to effortlessly communicate the rush of newfound love, to briefly infect her listeners with that feeling, is her greatest strength. Where lyrics like, "When I'm with you I have fun," and "I hate sleeping alone," might seem trite or obvious on paper, Cosentino delivers them with a lovestruck swoon so affecting, we can't help but d'awww. --Hari Ashurst

47. Beach House

"Walk in the Park"

[Sub Pop]

On their first two records, Beach House made lovers' rock for basements. Their albums were muted, dusty crawlspaces that you entered alone and lingered until you were ready to face the world. On their Sub Pop debut, Teen Dream, they let all the air in on this sound at once, amplifying the intimacy at its heart. "Walk in the Park" was at once its saddest and most cinematic moment. Victoria Legrand's indelible chorus, a six-note wail of failed ascent tugged downward by the chord progression, embodied the album's tone: you can be just as gorgeously miserable walking in the crisp fall air as you were sitting in your bedroom, and Beach House prove that they're more than capable of soundtracking your heartbreak wherever you take it. --Jayson Greene

46. The Knife [ft. Mt. Sims and Planningtorock]

"Colouring of Pigeons"

[Mute / Rabid]

If you're going to go from creating claustrophobic electronic pop music to writing an opera based on the notebooks of Charles Darwin, you might as well fully commit to the audacity of such a move and release an 11-minute teaser track. But as "Colouring of Pigeons" shows, the Knife took to (as the group's Olof Dreijer described it) the "pretentious and dramatic gestures" of opera with ease. The shambling backing track of strings, drums and cymbals might be new to the Knife, but the piece's ominous theatricality is most certainly not. Both Olof and Karin Dreijer Andersson are right at home in this skin, turning the mundane details of Darwin's ornithological observations into haunting, fractured poetry. --David Raposa

45. Gorillaz

"On Melancholy Hill"

[Virgin]

In recent years, Damon Albarn has been aging gracefully into a pop culture role that extends far beyond his provincial Britpop persona. He's done that in part by either sharing or ceding the spotlight to a revolving door of eclectic collaborators. Luckily for longtime Blur fans, he reserved the best song on Plastic Beach as a showcase for his own voice. Albarn's performance on the lovesick ballad "On Melancholy Hill" is wistful and understated enough that he sounds overwhelmed at the center of his own buzzing synthpop symphony. The contrast between his weathered, weary tone and the bright notes that carry the main hook is surprisingly beautiful, like garish commercial lighting that ends up appearing romantic in spite of itself. --Matthew Perpetua

44. Das Racist

"hahahaha jk?"

[Mad Decent / Greedhead / Mishka]

Das Racist mock hip-hop because they love it. They're the guys who'll make a joke out of anything, but like all great satirists, still take their role seriously. This track off Sit Down, Man, their second mixtape of 2010, is as close as they've come to a statement of purpose, i.e. a statement of ambiguity. They're working in a field whose audience is hung up on authenticity, so that's the button they keep pushing from both sides: extreme rap insider references ("Ice-T plus Coco"!), extreme rap outsider references (Dwight Schrute!), and jabs about race and class wrapped up in copious lolz. Are they in or out? Well, in enough that "hahahaha"'s got a beat from Boi-1da, the same guy who's produced a bunch of Drake's hits-- even if that beat is a freaking "Days of Our Lives" parody. --Douglas Wolk

43. Waka Flocka Flame

"Hard in Da Paint"

[Warner Bros.]

Much like Waka Flocka Flame, roundballers Charles Oakley and Rick Mahorn went hard in the motherfuckin' paint and were vilified by purists for turning a sweet science into a headbanger's ball. Of course, NBA fans remember them now because they recognized the effectiveness of focused intimidation, and what we have here from Waka is a master class in sonic domination. Producer Lex Luger once again sounds like he's making beats for the Decepticon Francis Scott Key, and most of the rappers talking shit about Flocka on Twitter have entire albums with fewer memorable lines than this one packs into five minutes. But the song's greatest lesson is a point lost on so many others: a rapper doesn't have to be everything to everybody all at once. --Ian Cohen

42. Japandroids

"Younger Us"

[Polyvinyl]

Japandroids: "Younger Us"

Japandroids' slept-on between-LPs single "Younger Us" touches on something essential to rock music that too few bands these days even attempt: encapsulating the spirit and romance of youth. It makes sense: Hip-hop and electronic R&B are basically the sounds of youth culture now, and although Japandroids are taking a rearview approach to their lives here, they aren't doing it with heavy sighs, misty eyes, or the trappings of reflective, so-called mature rock. They're still putting their heads down and rocking, refusing to intellectualize skin touching skin for the first time or choosing beer over sleep-- the kind of shit that seems so simple when you spell it out, but can be so profound in the moment when you're living it. No grief, all joy... memories are made of this. --Scott Plagenhoef

41. Deerhunter

"Helicopter"

[4AD]

Pretty and unabashedly earnest, "Helicopter" flirts with melodrama. Whenever I hear its slow prom-dance lilt and maudlin lyrics, I think of Sonic Youth's winking take on the Carpenters' soft-rock classic "Superstar". But Sonic Youth's love for that song was sincere, and so is Cox's aching interpretation of a truly sad Dennis Cooper story about a Russian teen lost in the worlds of sex slavery and mafia violence. What pushes "Helicopter" beyond mere sentimentality are the evocative simplicity of Cox's pithy verse ("They don't pay like they used to pay/ I used to make it day to day") and the swirl of electronic debris that grounds the arena-sized chords. The result is emotion that's universal without being generic. Even if you haven't read Cooper's story, "Helicopter" will make you feel it in your bones. --Marc Masters